Perry’s ‘Trail of Tears’ comment draws criticism

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that, at a time when the Washington Redskins are mired in controversy for having an insensitive name, that Gov. Rick Perry’s comparison of the voluntary flood of undocumented migrants into Texas to the infamous “Trail of Tears” is drawing criticism.

The Trail of Tears is the name of the ethnic cleansing campaign and forced relocation of tens of thousands of American Indians from the southeastern United States to Oklahoma during the 1830s. More than 6,000 are believed to have died.

On Monday, at a news conference in Weslaco about the current migration of tens of thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans into Texas, Perry predicted:

“There’s babies. I mean there are babies there that have been transported all across Mexico. I’m telling you in July and August, if the message does not get out into those countries in Central America, you’re going to see a trail of tears again, from Central America to Texas. There will be numbers of people [who] die en route. And that’s the humanitarian side. We as a people, we cannot allow this to happen. And our federal government is the one that has the ability to work with those countries, to stop this from happening.”

Humanitarian tragedy, okay, but Trail of Tears?

Nearly a dozen callers to the Houston Chronicle on Tuesday think not.

“That’s like saying the plague and the Holocaust are the same because they both occurred in Europe,” said John Tawatney of Houston, a Cherokee descendant. “That comparison is insensitive, to say the least.”

Echoed Kenneth Knight, a Chickasaw from Houston whose ancestors died in the Trail of Tears: “That’s a highly insensitive remark. (The Trail of Tears) was a forcible march of terror, and this migration is nothing like that. These people now are coming to Texas of their own choice.”

Perry spokesman Travis Considine said the governor “was commenting on the resulting consequences (human suffering) of the migration, not why it’s occurring.

“The parallel is rooted in the humanitarian catastrophe,” Considine said.

As for tribes involved in the Trail of Tears, we’re still awaiting word.